What the @Facebook @Oculus acquisition tells me about the future

Both the Internet and my own circle of friends have debated this issue to death (so price. much social.) And as Fred Wilson puts it,

It isn’t clear if the next thing is virtual reality, the internet of things, drones, machine learning, or something else. Larry doesn’t know. Zuck doesn’t know. I don’t know. But the race is on to figure it out.

What we can expect, however, is increased VC interest in companies that could potentially bring us a new future. This is true for companies who are both competitive and complimentary to products by Nest or Oculus. Competitive companies stand to gain from these acquisitions because VC’s know that it’s rarely a one-horse race. Complimentary companies stand to gain even more as many tech incumbents have already signaled that this is where the future is going.

I’m bullish on VR, and FB/Oculus’ upcoming challenges will prove whether the Oculus Rift is more of a Segway or an iPhone. The best step that the iPhone took was to create an ecosystem that was both open and controlled – any third party could build on top of the iPhone, but the quality of the apps were held to a high bar.

There are startups that are already building technologies that would be a great fit for the Oculus Rift. Thalmic Labs, based in Canada, has created the Myo armband for accurate and granular gesture control. Nymi and InteraXon are two bio-sensing startups – they measure heartbeat and brain activity, respectively, to control a connected device. And the quantified fitness space continues to grow with startups like Push and Hexoskin.

As I look at the new crop of hardware startups that will help create the next platform, it’s easy to see two things:

Many of these next-generation hardware startups are based in Canada, where cost of living is cheaper, recruiting is less competitive, and the government has been supportive of startups by offering R&D tax incentives and offering a start-up visa.

From where I stand, the future is both fun (toy!) and friendly (Canada!). I, for one, cannot wait.